JUST GO WITH IT (2011) - Review

Director Dennis Dugan and Adam Sandler have collaborated in the past on several movies, including "Happy Gilmore", "Big Daddy" and "Grown Ups", to name a few. Now, they team-up once again for another one of their PG-13 semi-raunchy comedies. It's not as hardcore as an R-rated raunch-fest like "The Hangover" or any Farrelly brothers movie for that matter, but it's still enough to appease the public's craving for low-brow humor and still fly under the MPAA's radar. Make no mistake, "Just Go With It" is far from being a family film.

Adam Sandler plays Danny, a plastic surgeon who found out a long time ago that using a wedding ring is the perfect tool to use when trying to get laid. His scam works well and many beautiful women fall under his spell. Eventually thunder strikes and he ends up falling in love with Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), a beautiful and much younger woman. He intends to get seriously involved with her, but she thinks he's married, so he conjures up a new lie : he's divorced. Palmer still wants to see and talk to the good doctor's ex-wife, which prompts Danny to ask Katherine (Jennifer Aniston), his loyal assistant, to play along as the fake spouse. One thing leads to another and Katherine's kids come into play, then a trip to Hawaii, then wedding plans and...well, you get the picture. Nothing goes as planned and Danny will have to swim his way up a stream of lies.

You shouldn't expect this to be a laugh-out-loud comedy. At most, it's an amusing diversion. Aniston and Sandler make a good team on-screen. In fact, they just might be the only reason to see this movie. The chemistry is there and that's all it takes. Nicole Kidman also makes an appearance as an irritating college friend of Katherine's. I'm not sure how she got involved in this movie, but she seemed to have fun with it, so I did too. The jokes are pretty dull for most of its running time, filled with the usual assortment of toilet humor (quite literally in one scene), man-child gags and sexual innuendo. Remember, this is Adam Sandler humor we're talking about. Nothing ever goes truly over-the-top, but lingers safely at the border between harmlessly tasteless and offensively raunchy. I also found the movie to be much longer than it needed to be. Somewhere around 90 minutes would have worked just fine.

The movie is a loose remake of a 1969 comedy starring Walter Matthau (based on a french play), which wasn't that great to begin with. "Just Go With It" is best enjoyed when applying the very phrase used in the title. You have to go with it if you intend to have any fun at all. It's hard to enjoy the whole thing, but parts of it are entertaining enough.

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